Development live!

We are proud to announce that Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.10: “Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus” has been released! With 6 months of development there have been a huge number of changes, including the addition of a brand new species. Octopodes are a race of sentient, amphibious cephalopods incapable of wearing armour, but able to wear up to eight rings at a time thanks to their tentacles. They’re squishy in mêlée but come with the new combat mechanic of constriction, allowing them to immobilise their foes and deal additional damage over time.

Alongside all the exciting new content in-game, there have been many significant improvements and additions to Webtiles. A list of visible monsters is now displayed, there are various menu improvements, and Webtiles games can even be watched by console players over SSH.

You can download 0.10 from our Download page, or play console builds online on CAO or CDO. Webtiles will be upgraded to 0.10 within the next few days, keep an eye out for an update!

We’re also conducting a survey of players alongside this release. If you have a few minutes to spare please take a look, we’d greatly appreciate your response.

Don’t forget that the 0.10 release tournament begins on February 25th! All 0.10 games played on CAO and CDO will count towards it, which of course includes Webtiles games. Check out the tournament website for the rules, start forming clans, and get ready to tackle the challenging new banners!

Some of the major changes this version include:

New species: Octopodes, capable of wearing eight rings, but not most other items of armour.

Removed species: Mountain Dwarves have returned to the mountains. Read why they were axed here.

Changed species: Hill Orcs have had their aptitudes improved, and Minotaurs have gained both better aptitudes and a retaliatory attack with their horns. Centaurs have a slower metabolism, but are now somewhat herbivorous, gaining bonus nutrition from plants but less nutrition from meat. Draconians cannot wear body armour anymore, but can wear gloves and boots. Some Demonspawn mutations have been adjusted, and a number of new mutation sets are also available. Kenku have rediscovered their roots and now prefer to be called Tengu.

Backgrounds: Arcane Marksmen are back with a Hex-based spellbook. Transmuters have Beastly Appendage (a new spell providing a temporary beneficial combat mutation) instead of Fulsome Distillation and Evaporate. Necromancers have Control Undead instead of Dispel Undead. Monks have been rewarded for their devotion to asceticism and gain a one-time boost to ** piety when they first convert to a god.

Skills: You will now need to find an appropriate item or spell to train most skills (and doing so allows even unknown skills to be trained). Additionally, partial levels of skills (e.g., ‘15.2’) matter.

New monsters: Blizzard demons can call down freezing cold and howling winds with but a gesture. Profane servitors are angels that have been corrupted by Yredelemnul. These undead beings radiate unholy darkness and are resistant to holy forces. Several new holy monsters have been added.

Changed monsters: Reapers are much more powerful. Fiends are now known as Brimstone Fiends, and imps are now known as crimson imps. Some demons have found themselves on different glyphs. Summoning monsters bring fewer creatures with each cast, and monsters with breath attacks (e.g., dragons) need to recover between attacks. There are many new monster descriptions and quotes.

Spells: Combining Swiftness and Flight no longer gives bonus movement speed. Mephitic Cloud and Evaporate no longer guarantee a 3×3 cloud. Passage of Golubria creates two portals when cast, and allows more than two portals to exist simultaneously. Lee’s Rapid Deconstruction and Shatter are stopped by walls unless the spell manages to destroy them. To account for the monster summoning changes, Abjuration is now a single-target spell. The screen-wide version is available as a new level 6 spell, Mass Abjuration. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and Levitate have been removed.

Cheibriados: Ponderous equipment has been replaced. Instead, gaining Cheibriados piety slows you down. Followers are no longer given resistances, but gain the Temporal Distortion ability, which moves nearby monsters forwards in time a few turns.

Makhleb: The demon prince of destruction deals only in blood and souls! Makhleb’s invocations now cost health instead of magic. Followers will be rewarded for kills with a larger amount of health, but no magic.

The three good gods now have piety decay over time, but each has new methods of gaining piety. Elyvilon piety from pacification has been greatly increased and piety from weapon sacrifices has been adjusted, Zin demands a tithe of all gold collected in return for piety, and The Shining One gives piety for meeting new monsters (and determining whether they need to be eradicated!).

Constriction: Octopodes, nagas, some snakes, and tentacled monstrosities can now prevent their foes from escaping while squeezing the life out of them.

Various changed mechanics: Poison resistance is now only 90% effective against most effects. No spells work through glass or trees anymore. The slaying property (incribed as {Dam+X}) now works identically to weapon enchantments. Contaminated (‘brown’) chunks always give nutrition and cause nausea instead of sickness. Nauseous characters can only eat when near starving and might make themselves ill.

Items: All polearms have been lengthened and may now be evoked (‘v’) to attack non-adjacent squares (like the reaching brand). Potions of healing are now known as potions of curing, and wands of healing are now known as wands of heal wounds. Many new fixed artefacts have been added.

Branches: Terrain in the Abyss now shifts with nearly every step. This may open new escape routes for stranded adventurers – or seal ones they were planning to take. Pandemonium has a dangerous new holy-themed unique level. The Hive is no more. Tiles players can enjoy the newly redecorated Snake Pit, Labyrinth, Vestibule of Hell, Crypt, Dis, Tartarus, Cocytus, and Pandemonium. Many new vaults have been added across the entire dungeon.

Interface: Spell success adjectives are replaced with failure rate percentages which are coloured based on potential miscast severity.

Thanks to Eronarn for compiling the list of changes, and to the many contributors to this version. See the full changelog for much more!

The Hive provided no interesting challenge — if you have an idea what to expect, you could do it without any risk whatsoever. Some tedium for a pile of food, corpses to sacrifice and a bunch of random items. No meaningful choices.

A much reduced portal vault version of Hive will likely return, but it didn’t make it for 0.10.

Why was the Hive removed? I know it was something of a bastion for herbivores, and a great stack drop. Removing it would increase risk for the former, and force variety int he case of the latter. But is it worth removing the variety from the game?

@Kilobyte: I get that the Hive was a predictable bit of landscape. But I think it’s worth remembering that we still get new players; the Hive is not only a real threat to them, but a chance for them to learn to tackle a situation. It becomes a reward, of sorts, for learning to play the game well. I still remember the first time I successfully steamrolled the Hive.

Congrats to the dev team of my single favorite game. I just kicked you some ideas along the lines of quests and crafting. Also, “last thoughts” death lines! :) Thank you for the outstanding work. –David

Enne: yes, we contemplated having Other as a possible answer there (and elsewhere, eg. for country). We didn’t go for it, for plain simplicity. If the list of sexes (or countries) does not do you justice, just ignore the question.

Thanks for making transmuters more fun by switching exploding potions for a first level combat trans. Yeah, the exploding corpse potions were extremely powerful, but they took all the fun out of playing — too many weight issues and micro-management — rather than simply transmuting and fighting.

Also, love the octopode race. I’m thinking they might make a great stealthy summoners, sneaking around and choking their victims unseen.

Great work you guys. Stone Soup is the best computer game I ever played.

The only change here that has caused me problems is the removal of Hive… in some previous games on trunk, I found one or two hive-like vaults in the dungeon or Lair, usually with some honeycombs and a couple of royal jellies… but in my most recent game (a level 27 DDEE) there wasn’t a single honeycomb from D:1 to D:27 or anywhere in Lair. I found a royal jelly in the Abyss, though!

Thinking that this has become a pet project of kids who spend entirely too much time on 4chan. Felids? Octopodes?

Oh but hey guys we need to axe the MD because, you know, differentiation.

Quite possibly the steamiest load of bollocks I have ever heard. Don’t be surprised with your myopic focus on esoteric balance issues – and bias against the very ‘gauche’ fantasy materials which your game, whether you like it or not, is clearly deeply steeped in – a game with all manner of DnD creatures ripped from all kinds of pulp fantasy sources.

Cutting the Hive is another good example of how you are apparently disconnected from what makes the game fun.

Variety. What you are doing is pigeonholing every species into some developer approved playstyle. The amount of vanilla races is already very low, unless you count elves.

Do we care if you have a Hill Dwarf, Mountain Dwarf and and Forest Dwarf? Hell no, they can be different shades each with only +1 or -1 aptitude in any given area. But people like these choices, insignificant though they may seem. They provide color in what is essentially a strategy game of math with an exponentially increasing chance to win the longer you survive.

What you’re going to end up with is exactly what you seem to be begging for – a fork, a serious one, a la Super Lotsa Added Stuff.

to dpeg: I just checked the roguelike radio link and heard the first few minutes of your interview. Was shocked to hear that you left the crawl team.

A bit of unasked-for advice: you need a harder shell against all those morons who attacked you regarding the MD removal. And if you feel that no one came to your side, then just deal with it. Same thing happens to all of us, one time or another.

Don’t come back to crawl for yourself, or the other devs. Come back beause you’ve been a major part in creating the best computer game there is. Come back for the players that are here now and for the thousands that will be coming in the future.

Figure out how a way, along with your coworkers, how to work together as a group and make the right decisions. But you’re part of crawl, whether you like it or not, and you’re still needed here.

Perhaps you can go to Linley for some advice. But find a way to get back to crawl.

There’s some real wonkiness with the changes to smite targeting. Glass walls sometimes block airstrike on squares that can be targeted with LOS spells/projectiles, and even ally attack orders are blocked for some reason. I’m hoping neither of those were intentional.

It is another in a series of patches that add unappealing gimmicky options and take away/nerf a lot of the traditional options that I enjoyed using.

A few years ago Crawl had a very traditional/serious fantasy feel in terms of the character building options (although there was were some comedy monsters admittedly).

But that has changed. There has been a steady process of eliminating traditional fantasy options and introducing “comedy” fantasy options. The comparison to SLASH’EM hits the nail on the head.

It really does seem like it was hijacked by people who dislike traditional vanilla fantasy.

It really seems like Crawl’s development has been hijacked by a group of people who hate traditional semi serious fantasy and enjoy ironic hipster Dungeons of Dredmor style fantasy.

Removing dwarves is just lazy. They’re one of the classic fantasy races and they’re incredibly popular. If they’re implemented in a boring way, isn’t the solution to find a way to make them more interesting, instead of just eliminating them and them adding a “hilarious” gimmick race instead?

I’m pretty sure most of the devs with an opinion on it at all do dislike “traditional vanilla fantasy.” But that’s not the reason MD was removed; it was removed because it was redundant. If you don’t mind redundancy, great, but a lot of people do.

Incidentally, Hive removal was my favourite 0.10 change. That branch was the second most tedious one in the game after Abyss, and the latter actually has a reason to exist.

It turned out I had a local installation of libsqlite3 that took precedence over the system one. Everything works fine after removing the local libsqlite3. This was, however, not a problem with earlier versions of crawl.

I really enjoy the patch and the game but in a way I agree with John Q Public and Juan Valdez’s view. The game does not need to be so far taken away from its classic fantasy roots. It is a very, very cool and slick game — turning it much more into pigeonholed gameplay with ironic hipster flavor is absolutely the antithesis of what makes the game appealing and great.

Developers behind this movement, take a step back and realize that taking it much further in this sort of flavor’s direction will result in an extremely bland, totally deindividualized game with no immersive qualities. Most people don’t get into a game because the developers are in a nerd circlejerk, but because the game has variety in play and style and is immersive.

Nice, we will fight with all our 8 arms with this scuzzy minotaurs, because Tengu needs us. For Azatoth, maybe some work for shopping system in next revision (dropping items in dungeons is more frustating than selling for 1 gold i.e.)

Eh… I love this game, but I’m new. I’ve never been to Hive, and as I play a Deep Elf Wizard, Mephitic cloud is all that keeps me alive. Fizzling is already a risk, but adding additional unreliability into my early game survival just seems… I’ll stick with .9.2.

Please explain how beastly appendage works. Particularly the “tentacle” part, since that’s all i seem to get with my kenku transmuters.

There is no wiki entry; the knowledge bot it turns “monstrous”. Looking at “monstrous” mutations, there’s no mention of tentacles. And no mention on said monstrous mutations affect unarmed combat, base or auxiliary, damage.

Uh, what “ironic hipster” flavor do you see in Dungeon Crawl? I’m confused over this. I’ve played Dungeons of Dredmor, and nothing in Crawl compares to it in terms of silliness. Cat-people and octopus-people might seem weird to people who prefer D&D style, but those can be done seriously, you know.

If you want goofy, try drill-beaked penguins as a playable race, or something.

BA just gives you an aux attack mutation in a free slot, comparable to horns 2 in damage. Tentacles are the glove slot aux attack mutation. Usually you can also get horns or talons, but those slots aren’t free for Tengu, so you always get tentacles instead.

Thank you for your answer but since i’m using BA without a main weapon i’d also need the base damage. Unless it falls under the “everything else category” so 3 damage. So maybe i’m better off using a weapon in my main hand?

Anyway, thanks again. Also there’s a wiki page now.

But i don’t seem to be able to butcher corpses while in spider form anymore :-(

People like dwarves because of flavor. That makes them not redundant. You could have two races with identical stats but different flavor and people will play them differently. Sorry if you can’t understand that not everyone is a munchkin.

I agree with the MD removal. I thing it was a tough, but necessary decision. I also think elves should be bundled in one package. Redundancy doesn’t help anyone.

I like the new race (didn’t played it yet). Why not, I say, and let’s give it a try. It would be nice to have some insectoids thrown in there someday (ant people, bee people, etc…). It’s fantasy you know. I swear I would play a blob, a slime or a giant amoeba if I could. Relevant differences is what makes it interesting. Not more of the same.

For those who like dwarves & classic fantasy races, I understand your frustration but still think multiple flavors of the same race is not the solution. A dwarf theme branch of the dungeon, on the other hand, seems necessary to me. I still don’t really grasp why there is none. I mean the orcs & the elves have theirs, why not the Dwarves ? I am sure there is a way to be creative with them (…avoiding a repetition of the orcish mines being an issue). In any case, space should be made for them in the dungeon. It requires work but I believe it should be attempted. Furthermore, it could give the game a more classic feel that would perhaps counterbalance it’s more wacky elements.

I feel like removing mountain dwarves and hive has made it less accessible to new people. MDFi was how new people won at crawl. The hive was how new people playing spriggan’s won at crawl. They were the “Easy” setting, and I think its too bad they are gone. I think my favorite version was 0.5

Fighter is one of the worst backgrounds – any guide identifying MDFi as the “Easy” setting is either outdated by at least five versions or has a very strange idea of “easy”; for every version after 0.5, more than half the combinations in the game were better than MDFi. In 0.6 in particular, it was one of the worst possible combos, outdone only by a few mummies and chaos knights.

So really removing them probably made the game more newbie-friendly if anything, by making them realize the outdated guides are outdated. Also, Mi and HO are now more effective than MD, so if MD stayed in 0.10 then MiFi and HOFi would be better choices than MDFi anyway.